


Unfamiliar

by fabrega



Category: What We Do in the Shadows (TV)
Genre: Blood, Episode Tag, Feelings, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Puns & Word Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:42:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24965428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: Guillermo does not untie them right away.
Relationships: Guillermo/Nandor the Relentless (What We Do in the Shadows TV)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 225





	Unfamiliar

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately after episode 2x10, Nouveau Théâtre des Vampires.
> 
> Thanks so much to smarshtastic for the beta. ♥

Guillermo does not untie them right away. 

"I didn't even stop to think," he says, half to himself and half to the closest camera. "I need to... I need to think."

In a low voice, Nandor asks the others, "What does he have to think about?" Before they can answer, he calls across the room. "What do you have to think about, Guillermo?"

Guillermo doesn't reply. He's still absolutely _covered_ in blood.

"Surely he's not going to kill us," Laszlo says. He tugs at the ropes, but they don't give.

Nadja scoffs. "If he wanted to kill us, he would have killed us with the rest of the vampires."

"If he wanted to kill us," Colin Robinson says, matter-of-factly, "He could've done it back at the house."

The others stop for a moment as that thought sinks in--how much Guillermo had done for them, how unsafe they might have been with a vampire killer in the house.

Colin Robinson doesn't seem to require any such reflection. "It's funny, how we thought we knew him, but it turns out that he's... _unfamiliar_ to us." He pauses deliberately, enunciating the pun, and everybody else groans. There are even one or two groans from the camera crew. "See, because he used to be Nandor's _familiar_ , but I'm using a slightly different definition of the word _familiar_ \--"

"Now is not the time, Colin Robinson!" Nadja hisses.

" _Used to be_ ," Nandor whispers to himself, his eyes on Guillermo.

Laszlo looks thoughtful. "Given that he has us at a distinct disadvantage here, perhaps we should try being polite?"

"It cannot hurt." Nadja straightens, then says loudly, "Excuse me? Mister...Buillermo?"

Guillermo rolls his eyes in disbelief. "Really? Are you kidding me? I _just_ told you guys my name."

"It's okay, I've got this," Laszlo says to Nadja, then gives it a try. "Señor De La Cruz?" He rolls both 'r's and also somehow the 'z', spending at least a second on each one.

Guillermo's face scrunches up in a look of discomfort and annoyance. "Why doesn't that feel better?" he says, mostly to himself.

"Guillermo," Nandor says, ignoring the others, "Why haven't you untied us?"

Guillermo picks his way through the overturned chairs and the vampire corpses and makes his way up onto the stage, stopping in front of Nandor. "You threw me under the bus!"

"Guillermo, it is not a bus, it is a guillotine thing. And you were not underneath it-- _we_ were underneath it! We are still underneath it!" Nandor stomps a foot petulantly. Nadja and Laszlo exchange a look.

"It's a figure of speech," There's the briefest of pauses, which everyone in the room knows is Guillermo not saying the word _master_ , "...Nandor. It means you blamed me."

"I do not understand what a bus has to do with anything," Nandor says, but Guillermo will not be deterred.

"You blamed me for all those vampire killings!"

"But you _did_ do all those vampire killings," Laszlo says, looking from Guillermo to the camera and back again, "Didn't you?"

"Please say that you did," Nadja says, not giving Guillermo space to answer. "If there are _two_ horrible vampire killers out there on the loose, I will never again get a wink of sleep."

Guillermo squares his shoulders, raises his chin. "Yeah, I did. I killed all those vampires. I did it to keep you all safe." He looks over at Nandor, who meets his gaze for a second before looking away. "But you didn't know that I had! You blamed me to save yourselves!"

None of the vampires have a response to that. Colin Robinson grimaces, showing his teeth; Nadja and Laszlo look to Nandor, who, to be fair, had done almost all of the blaming.

"Yes, I blamed you," Nandor says, looking up at Guillermo after what feels like too long a silence. "I told them I killed you."

"And that!" Guillermo throws his arms up. "Uncalled for! I know I didn't give you a lot of warning when I left, but you _had_ to know--"

"I told them I killed you," Nandor cuts in, his voice firm, "Because if you had done it and you were dead, there would be nothing else they could do to you."

Guillermo looks taken aback, his mouth hanging open for a second.

"I'm not sure that's one hundred percent true," Colin Robinson mutters, but neither Nandor nor Guillermo seems to notice--they just look at each other.

* * *

"It doesn't _matter_ if it's true," Guillermo says to the camera. 

He has untied the vampires, and they are making their way through the piles of vampire corpses while Guillermo takes a moment for himself.

Guillermo shrugs, and he seems to be hiding a smile. "Like, it probably isn't true. But what matters is that Nandor _thinks_ it is."

* * *

Outside, Nadja and Laszlo immediately turn into bats and head off into the night. Nandor lingers a minute longer next to where Guillermo is parked.

"Come home," Nandor says, and it sounds like a command, but then the hard expression drops from his face and his shoulders slump. "Please."

"I don't even--actually, I do still need to get that mini-fridge?" Before Guillermo has time to say more than that, Nandor also turns into a bat and flies off. 

Guillermo sighs.

A voice comes from behind him: "If you're going that direction, would you mind if I hitched a ride?"

Guillermo sighs again, deeper this time, and gestures for Colin Robinson to get in.

* * *

"You know," Colin Robinson says, speaking slightly louder so that Guillermo can hear him over the radio that Guillermo had deliberately turned up, "A lot of things have changed since you left. Big things."

Guillermo looks doubtful. "I haven't been gone for that long. Things don't happen quickly in that house."

"Well, I moved into the other room in the basement!"

There's a pause, while Guillermo waits for him to continue. He doesn't say anything else, but he _does_ turn the radio down.

"So... just that."

"Mainly just that, yeah."

Guillermo waits another moment, to see if there's anything else, but no, still silence. "That's not really a--"

"I mean, also, there are a lot of bloody corpses around," Colin Robinson interrupts. "Like, a _lot_ of bloody corpses."

" _There_ it is," Guillermo says under his breath.

"Lotta corpses, lotta blood." 

Guillermo makes eye contact with the camera in the back seat, exasperated, before he answers. "Why does it sound like you want _me_ to do something about it? That isn't my responsibility anymore. They know where the--they can look around until they find the mop and handle it themselves."

"Can they, though? I don't know if you saw, it was a _lot_ of corpses, and they don't even know what dry-cleaning is--"

Guillermo sounds like he's trying to be firm, but his voice wavers ever so slightly. "They can handle it themselves."

"Well, if that's how you feel about it," Colin Robinson says. He looks at Guillermo and then out the window. With any luck, he'll be quiet the rest of the way home.

Guillermo looks at the camera in the back again--a complicated, unreadable look--and turns the radio back up.

* * *

Guillermo stands in front of the mini-fridge with his hands on his hips. He'd used a wet wipe on his face and glasses before he'd gotten in his car, getting as much of the blood off of himself as possible, and he'd shed as many bloody layers as he reasonably could. He's not clean, but he's as close as he's gonna get right now. He desperately needs a shower. 

"I just want to go _home_ ," he says to himself.

The mini-fridge is, somehow, also covered in blood.

"Of course it's covered in blood," Guillermo mutters, staring at it. "Why wouldn't it be covered in blood?"

This is where Nandor finds him some minutes later, staring at the mini-fridge. He hasn't moved. He doesn't seem to notice the way Nandor pauses in the doorway, staring too, first at the mini-fridge and then at Guillermo.

Nandor clears his throat, and Guillermo straightens automatically.

"So, you are back?" Nandor says. It doesn't sound all that much like a question.

Guillermo blinks at him. "Why is there blood on my mini-fridge?"

Nandor regards the mini-fridge like he's seeing it for the first time. "Presumably somebody has bled on it. Is it important, who has bled on it?"

"Who--no. Not really.” Guillermo makes a face.

Nandor takes a surreptitious step forward, and he repeats: "So, you are back."

"Yes--"

A wave of delight passes over Nandor's face.

"--to pick up the mini-fridge."

Nandor's delighted expression is gone, replaced by a deep scowl.

"Once I get it cleaned up, I'll take it and be out of your hair."

"You are leaving again! After all the things I did for you! I gave you a day off, and your very own pillow, and probably some other things! I thought you were sorry!" Nandor practically shouts. Guillermo looks at him in surprise as he rifles through his pockets; after a moment of digging, he manages to retrieve the note Guillermo had left him. He brandishes it like a weapon.

Guillermo squints, at it and then at Nandor. "Wait, were you just carrying that around with you?"

"It says that you are sorry! If you were sorry, you would be coming back!"

"I can be sorry and not come back," Guillermo says softly, with a half-hearted, apologetic smile.

"You _left_ me," Nandor says, the shift from yelling to quiet almost jarring. "You left me with just a _note_."

* * *

"This is, of course, not the first time I have needed to... _replace_ a familiar." Nandor says, addressing the camera. 

It's earlier, a day or so after Guillermo had moved out, and the calm exterior that Nandor obviously thinks he's projecting has more than a few cracks in it.

"I have had many familiars over the years. The great majority of them have died of various things, which happens often to humans. They are very...squishy. Sometimes it is unexpected, sometimes it is not. Usually you get someone to clean up the mess, maybe say something nice over the body, and move on. And also I have left familiars, for many reasons. Often they were unable to continue their work as a familiar, or they were disagreeable to me. Some of them, for example, did not like my horse."

Nandor makes a face, waves a hand dismissively.

"But this, I think, is the first time that a familiar has left me to go do other things. It is incredibly rude! He has apologized, of course--" Nandor waves Guillermo's note. The camera zooms in on the note, catching the single word _sorry_ again.

"--but you know what? I will not accept his apology. He's just a familiar! Nobody special. Just another one of my many familiars. Why are we even talking about him?" He waves dismissively again, tossing the note away and stalking out of the room. 

The camera is still rolling when he stalks back in and picks the note up again, tucking it carefully back into his pocket.

* * *

Guillermo looks at him, and the apologetic smile gets a little softer, a little more apologetic. "I didn't leave _you_. I just...left."

"To do what? What is more important than being the familiar of Nandor the Relentless?"

"Plenty of things!"

Nandor crosses his arms. "Like what?"

"What, you want me to list them?"

"Yes, please! Please tell me what you and your 'mini-fridge' could possibly be doing that is more important than being my familiar!"

"Lots of things!"

"What are these things, Guillermo? Tell me what the things are!"

The two of them have advanced on each other, seemingly without knowing it. Guillermo draws himself up as tall as he can, chin up, eyes blazing; it's hard not to think of the carnage in the theater earlier. Nandor draws himself up even taller, though, fangs bared, seemingly unafraid. They're almost chest to chest, Guillermo staring up into Nandor's face.

"Oh shit, dude, are they gonna--" one of the camera crew starts to whisper, but another elbows him into silence.

They stand there for a long moment.

Guillermo is the one who backs down first, shrinking back a step, relenting. He takes a deep breath and resettles his glasses on his nose before speaking. "I realized that there were things that I wanted that I wasn't going to get, being your familiar. And it seemed like the best thing for me to do was go."

Nandor hasn't backed down, and he doesn't hesitate. He grabs Guillermo by the bloody collar and kisses him.

"...well I was gonna say 'fight'," the camera guy whispers, and he gets elbowed again, the second person whispering, " _Jesus_ , Greg, shut _up_."

Guillermo sputters when Nandor lets go of him, obviously surprised. Honestly, Nandor looks a little surprised too--maybe neither one of them had been expecting that.

"I did not want you to go, okay?" Nandor says, his words forceful. "I do not want you to go. I am sorry that you want things and I am sorry that I got blood on your mini-fridge, but I do not want you to go. You will not go."

"You don't get to decide that anymore," Guillermo says, thrusting his chin out again. Nandor's hands ball into fists and his lip curls into the start of a snarl--and then Guillermo continues: "I do. And, at least for a little bit, I want to stay."

Guillermo tips up on his toes, kissing Nandor this time. If the first kiss had been unexpected, this one is even more so; some combination of the surprise and the force of it nearly pushes Nandor backwards into the wall. He growls in his throat, and Guillermo laughs and kisses him again.

Nandor's a little breathless when Guillermo finally pulls back, and Guillermo can't stop grinning.

"There are still things we need to talk about," Guillermo says. He's obviously trying to be serious, but the big grin definitely undercuts his point.

"I said that I am sorry about the blood on the mini-fridge!"

"Not that. Although I _do_ want to know how..." Guillermo stops, shaking his head. "No, no, the blood on the mini-fridge is not important. Other things."

Nandor nods solemnly. "We will talk about things--like about all of the vampires you have killed, maybe."

Guillermo grimaces. That's a fair point. "And how, if I'm staying, I'd like a bedroom with a door on it."

"I am sure we can...negotiate."

Guillermo raises a skeptical eyebrow. Nandor waggles his back in return, and then they're kissing again.

The camera crew backs quietly out of the room.

* * *

Nandor sits on the sofa, looking at the camera. For the first time in a good while, he looks content. "Okay, so maybe I was lying a little bit when I said that Guillermo was not special. I am still not happy with him for killing all those vampires, and for keeping it a secret from me, his master. But he was a good familiar--one of the best I ever had."

He smiles.

"And now, maybe, he will be something else good. We shall find out."

* * *

Guillermo loads the cleaned-up mini-fridge into the trunk and closes the door. Then he turns to the camera. "Yeah, so I'm taking the mini-fridge back to Mamá, like I said I would, and then I'm coming back here."

He looks up at the house, his gaze thoughtful.

"I'm coming back home, I guess. Same old place, but a little... _unfamiliar_ this time." He grins at the camera, pausing to enunciate the pun like Colin Robinson had done earlier. One of the camera crew groans, but Guillermo just keeps grinning. "Oh, come on, you love it."

And it's true. They do.


End file.
